remember: a cup
of coffee contains over 800 chemical
compounds......also...“Cocaine is a medication with few
medical uses and plenty of room
for abuse, but it’s legal for me to prescribe that.” Dr. Jane
Marmor

Santa Clara counties only medical
marijuana center says it willclose its doors permanently May 8thciting mounting legal problems and a frozen
bank account, according to founder/executive
director Peter Baez. Local police have charged Baez with one
count of selling marijuana without a doctors recommendation. With
their account frozen, the center will be hard pressed by the legal
problems they face. Baez says the centers 270 clients now
have nowhere to turn for legal marijuana. A memorial ceremony for the center is
planned for May 8th.

Read an interview with Peter Baez from
April 9... see below

.

PETER BAEZexecutive director and co-founder
of
the Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis CenterInterviewed April 9. . .read the transcript and discover
what the Santa Clara D.A. and the
San Jose Chief of Police DID to
prevent medical patients from
getting their medicine to help
relieve their pain.

NEWS[old news from May
18, 1998]San
Franciscos Cannabis Healing Centeris going to remain openat least through June.
A local judges ruling April 29th requires the center to show cause
why it should remain open for service after that time.
The order also requires the cannabis healing center to keep the
area in front of the club clean, and make sure
no one is selling drugs or alcohol there.source: KRON TV

.

San Francisco Judge RulesGarcia: Cannabis Cultivators Clubis Unlawful

But Dennis Peron
is Defiant!Peron: We're preparing to conform with
the judgesorder, that is, we not sell to third
parties, that is, to caregivers,
of patients that have letters of diagnosis. Thejudge seemed
to say, that we can sell marijuana to sick people, but we can't
sell to their agents. In other words, their husbands, their
wives,
their lovers; that - - then we have to sell only directly to the
patients. And that is actually exactly what we're doing now.
We
are totally conforming with 113624.5, in other words, Prop 215.
We are in conformity with that and we intend to stay open.Anchor: Mr. Peron, the attorney generals office
is vowing to
move in and seize your property. Do you expect them today?Peron: I'm not expecting them today. I strongly
suspect them;
they will move in with at least a hundred agents...try to close
the cannabis club just like they did last time. They'll close
it and
we'll reopen the next day. They cannot thwart the will of
the
people. They may try to close the cannabis club, but they can
never shut this movement down. This is more about love and
compassion. The people have voted and it's democracy now
that we're defending.Anchor: This isn't the first time you've been
told to shut down,
is it?Peron: No. As a matter of fact, since I've
been operating this for
four years, we've had these clouds over our heads from the feds,
the states, the locals. Everyone in the world has been
trying to shut
us down. They told us to change the law. Now, we changed
that
law and they find a little technicality; they said, 'you didn't
change
this technicality, therefore you have to move'. Hey, the building's
done nothing wrong and neither have we.Anchor: Are you going to appeal?Peron: We are going to appeal this decision. A
part of it we agree
with. The part that says we can sell marijuana to sick
people as
long as they have letters of diagnosis from their doctor, we agree
with that part. The only part we don't agree with, is
that we have
to move from this building. The building's done nothing
wrong.

On changing the name of the Cannabis
Cultivators Club...Peron: Now it is the Cannabis Healing Center and
we have
ceased selling marijuana to third parties, that is, caregivers of
patients. We are now in conformance with the law and these
two recent court rulings that said we can only sell marijuana
to the patients and that's what we're doing here.

DENNIS PERONINTERVIEWED March 6read the transcriptcan a compassionate Republican defeat
an egomaniacal right wing crusader
from his own party for the nomination
to the position of California Governor? sadly, Apparently NOT!!! (this time around, anyway) BUT,
it was
an enlightening pleasure
to see Dennis'
occupation listed on the ballot as a..."Medical Marijuana Provider"

NEWSDENNIS PERON STEPS DOWN!Peron announced Thursday he is quitting as
the director of the Cannabis Healing Center;He will now focus on his race for governor
of California. .
.

Dennis Peron:
I have decided to
voluntarily resign from the club. I
am going to not be confrontational
when the sheriff office raids us.. .
.

Hazel Rogers, a member of the club,
will take over next week, running the club as a
patient-to-patient collective, and even if the
sheriff shuts it down, she says she will reopen
it the next morning and continue selling
medicinal marijuana.read
more. .
.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey* plans to close
the club peacefully early next week: I
don't want to see anyone hurt, I don't want
to see anyone arrested over this...and I don't
really want to see these state agents come in
and do it because I'm concerned that that
would escalate the conflict. My obligation under
this court order would be to, like any eviction:
vacate the building...in this case, it goes further,
in the sense that it requires me to remove
any implements of an illegal nuisance and
store it, and then it requires me to turn the
occupation of the premises over to the landlord.. . .

check out KRON online video news reportSORRY...KRON HAS REMOVED
THIS VIDEO FROM THE WWWit WAS located at
http://www.kron.com/av/rm/1998/04/16-cannabis_kronv.ram

Despite the fact that California
voters approved Proposition 215, the initiative that allows the
possessionand culitvation of marijuana
for medical purposeswith a doctor's recommendation,
the U.S. Justice Department appears determined
to shut down the clubs that now exist.

"I was having to go to Oakland to buy it
because I couldn't get it locally very easily"
said a member who has AIDS and has been buying his marijuana there
since the center opened.
~ ~ ~"I think once a lot of the old, white,
Bible-thumping guys in the Senate die off, things will change for
the better."Peter Baez,
executive director and co-founder
The Santa Clara County Medical Cannabis
Center

Recent scientific
evidence
has forced the US Government
through its Justice Department agency,
the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
to commence legally binding procedures
that will likely result
in theend of marijuana prohibition

"People are sent to
jail every day because of mistaken assumptions about the
abuse potential of marijuana, assumptions that have never
been scientifically proved. DEA's recognition of this is
a welcome
and important step..."

High Times reporter
Peter Gorman from the Art Bell radio show aired on 1/12/98[click here]i am sorry but the link to this show, which
used to reside at
http://ww2.audionet.com/artbell/abell/9801/ab0112.ram,is no longer there; if anyone
finds it, please email me! thanks.then fastforward show to 01:07:18
where the interview begins.
if you don't already have it, you'll need RealPlayer [click here]

once you have retrieved the interview file, you may need to
exit Winkys Universe temporarily for the audio to work~
because of the BEATNIK midi file,The Six Wives of Henry VIII
that is playing on this page~
but come right back and RealPlayer should automatically override
that BEATNIK midi file...?PROBLEMS?

SAN FRANCISCO) Since Proposition 215 legalized marijuana as medicine
in California, as many as 1,200 people have flocked daily to just
one of the seven buyers clubs in the Bay Area. There, they can purchase
pot to treat conditions from headaches to AIDS. Yet the question
remains: Does basic scientific evidence support the use of hemp
for better health?

Given that one in three adults has smoked pot at some point, that
marijuana is this state's biggest cash crop, and that hundreds of
thousands of Californians are smoking it to relieve a variety of
ills, one would expect plenty of data to be available on marijuana
as medicine.

Yet while anecdotal testimonials suggest pot should take its rightful,
though perhaps limited, place in the American pharmacopia, the rigorous
long-term studies that modern science demands before a drug can
be declared safe and effective have yet to be done.